THE PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 669 



chair of a section or department. In clear memory of the admirable 

 addresses which you have had the privilege of hearing from Prof. 

 Flower, and just now from Dr. McDonnell, I cannot doubt that that 

 practice is a very good one ; but I would venture to say, to use a term 

 of philosophy, that it looks very much better from an objective than 

 from a subjective point of view. But I found that my resolution, like 

 a great many good resolutions that I have made in the course of my 

 life, came to very little, and that it was thought desirable that I should 

 address you in some way. But I must beg of you to understand that 

 this is no formal address. I have simply announced it as a few intro- 

 ductory remarks, and I must ask you to forgive whatever of crudity and 

 imperfection there ma}' be in the mode of expression of what I have to 

 say, although naturally I shall do my best to take care that there is 

 neither crudity nor inaccuracy in the substance of it. It has occurred 

 to me that I might address myself to a point in connection with the 

 business of this department which forces itself more or less upon the 

 attention of everybody, and which, unless the bellicose instincts of 

 human nature are less marked on this side of St. George's Channel than 

 on the other, may possibly have something to do with the large audi- 

 ences we are always accustomed to see in the anthropological depart- 

 ment. In the Geological Section I have no doubt it will be pointed 

 out to you, or, at any rate, such knowledge may crop up incidentally, 

 that there are on the earth's surface what are called loci of disturb- 

 ance, where, for long ages, cataclysms and outbursts of lava and the 

 like take place. Then everything subsides into quietude ; but a similar 

 disturbance is set up elsewhere. In Antrim, at the middle of the Ter- 

 tiary epoch, there was such a great centre of physical disturbance. 

 We all know that at the present time the earth's crust, at any rate, is 

 quiet in Antrim, while the great centres of local disturbance are in 

 Sicily, in Southern Italy, in the Andes, and elsewhere. My experience 

 of the British Association does not extend quite over a geological 

 epoch, but it does go back rather longer than I care to think about ; 

 and, when I first knew the British Association, the locus of disturbance 

 in it was the Geological Section. All sorts of terrible things about the 

 antiquity of the earth, and I know not what else, were being said there, 

 which gave rise to terrible apprehensions. The whole world, it was 

 thought, was coming to an end, just as I have no doubt that, if there 

 were any human inhabitants of Antrim in the middle of the Tertiary 

 epoch, when those great lava-streams burst out, they would not have 

 had the smallest question that the whole universe was going to pieces. 

 Well, the universe has not gone to pieces. Antrim is, geologically 

 speaking, a very quiet place now, as well cultivated a place as one need 

 see, and yielding abundance of excellent produce ; and so, if we turn 

 to the Geological Section, nothing can be milder than the proceedings 

 of that admirable bod}-. All the difficulties that they seemed to have 

 encountered at first have died away, and statements that were the hor- 



